What Future for the City of the Future?

It’s the dawn of another year, a year in which many Cameroonians and especially the denizens of Bamenda will face with the pious hope that the quality and standard of life will see an improvement to that of 2023. It’s been four years today that in the midst of the on-going crisis, legislative and municipal elections, albeit held under unfavourable conditions to practice democracy in the Northwest and Southwest regions, brought in a new cream of leaders.

Bamenda was ambitiously baptized the city of the Future, The Abu Dhabi of Cameroon. Names that inspired the people and gave reasons to hope, slogan names that gave many the willingness to part ways with houses, pieces of land and properties that were deemed to be blocking the development of the city of Bamenda. Ambitious names and slogans that even silenced the guns of those that have opted for a different part as they watched as bulldozers make way for what could transform Bamenda into a modern city, yes the Abu Dhabi of Cameroon.

But fast forward, four years from 2019 into the future of the city of the future and you think you’ve been teleported in, decades into the past. The roads of Bamenda are dustier than ever before, the streets are littered with half broken structures, council sheds are closer to the major roads than even individuals who are asked by the same councils to respect building norms, there are more heaps of garbage than street lights, urban dwellings are blanketed with brown snow. The stench of urban waste fill the air in our markets, more and more residents are catching cold due to the dusty air.

Basic services are lacking, even a fledgling urban transport bus system that could have been the genesis of a future inner city transport system failed before it even started. Old unreliable buses bought at a huge expense to the daily demands of the city and with heavy kickbacks soon broke down in the middle of the streets, left to be broken down into spare parts in garages, sold to cronies and family friends or simply just vanished. Bamenda has fallen back many years behind.

While the city continue to rue it chances despite the multiplicity of problems it faces, the very sentries have turn to Lords and masters, they have squeezed from their vantage position the juice from the oranges, they continue to eat the flesh off, leaving us with only the bones to fight over..  

As the saying goes, the patient dog eats the fattest bone. But how rightly so, when the bald heads continue to grow fat and the dogs continue to live on the scrums and margins of society. The New Lords today own big modern mansions in posh neigbourhoods, within just a mandate in office are riding in big expensive cars, they nolonger drink the same water with us, they have switched neigbourhood, while some have taken up residence out of their supposed area of domicile, others own multi floor residential complexes. All this within five years.

But another election circle is approaching and soon we will be confronted with another ambitious name and slogan, the dusty roads will be covered with the impression of tarred roads, water may start flowing in public taps, some streets will be lighted, families will be promised jobs, friends will be promised positions and the seemingly vicious circle of under development and false promises and personal aggrandisement and the hold on power and position will continue.

But there is hope, for without it we are gone. As it’s often said, leaders are a reflection of the people.  We cannot pretend that we are different from our leaders.  A pear never falls far from the tree. If we can sell five years of our life for tablets of soap, a five thousand banknote or five kilogram of salt then we merit the leaders we have in the glass houses.

For years running we’ve decided to shot ourselves on the leg why blaming others for our perils. All efforts to eradicate from within us the pest that has infested our common hood have been mired by our blinded ambitions and utopia fueled by others in relatively safe place.

There can be no meaningful development with the guns in our backyard; we cannot progress as a people when we are so divided. We can only have the type of leaders we have now when a few decide to vote for the rest of us.  We can only make Bamenda the city of the future, the Abu Dhabi of Cameroon if we all invest in it. We can only have what we deserve from the choices we make, it’s time to wake up from slumber. We have the power to decide what we want our future to be like from the choice we make now.

From the Editorial of Frontline Magazine over City FM Radio on January 13, 2024